Shadow IT 101: Beyond convenience vs. security

Shadow IT, a term that loosely refers to any technology that is used in a company without the oversight of the IT department, isn’t a new concept. But companies don’t seem to have a better handle on it now than they did when we first started writing about it.

Today, about a third of a company’s tech purchases take place outside of IT. And a survey by Cisco found that while IT departments assumed their companies used 51 cloud service, employees in fact used 730 cloud services. Now consider that the average organization has 19.6 cloud-related security incidents each month. Suddenly, you’ve got a big problem on your hands.

This infographic from cloud file management and storage provider SmartFile offers insight into the Shadow IT phenomenon, the hidden costs to your organization, and why it isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.